Neutro
Also perhaps giving some form of priority to your oldest loyal customers that are registered on your forum for years would be nice 
Because even if the "elite priority" thing was a good idea, the fact that you could get it easily just by posting a few messages on the forum was kinda defeating the purpose.
I dislike the notion of 'loyalty via forum participation' in whole. I've been an EVGA customer since 2008(didn't register that card or make an account until I bought my second card 4.5 years later, because I was 16 at the time and appropriately inexperienced), but up until yesterday or so I'd never even
used the forums.
I say the rules for elite status are fine,
if you remove all mentions of forum participation from the entry avenues. Just shuffle out anyone who achieved status via those means post 30 series launch(or after the date of the announcement that elite members would be getting 24hr priority on said launch, which is what created the incentive to abuse that method in the first place) and into their own alternate category(possibly rename 'elite', or just leave it as is and create something entirely new with a different name, that has the same purchase/account history requirements, sans the forum post option, and then use
that status as the qualifier for the 24hr early queue access).
There's a
lot of people posting here complaining about that even being a thing in the first place, and understandably so(I agree with their complaints, if that hasn't been made clear). Honestly, even the option to gain status via purchasing a product of sufficient value should have been off the table within a certain time frame leading up to the 30 series launch(the price of a mobo or high tier PSU is nothing compared to the profits of scalping multiple GPUs, etc.). Instead, when they made the announcement about elite members getting 24hr early access, it should have been done 3-6 months prior to launch, along with a statement that only members who had acquired the status prior to said announcement would qualify. If they'd done
that, even the forum post option wouldn't have been an issue, as it would have only contained people that were genuinely participating up to that point, as they would have had no ulterior motive to do so prior to this(tl;dr: if it had been plainly stated that there was a hard cutoff date, and there was no advance warning regarding this announcement, nobody could have used that option - or any other option - to weasel their way in just to queue early). I suppose that's neither here nor there now though, but we
could at least do something about things going forward. I wholeheartedly doubt that that's gonna happen, but there's my $0.02.
As for the people commenting/lamenting about being in queue since 2020 to no avail, I sympathize, really. Even though I withdrew my queue for my 3080 ftw hybrid that I entered December 17th, it still feels awful to think about the fact that I
still to this day would not have received it, had I stayed in queue(according to enewt's oh so handy tracking project, which I am most grateful for, and has allowed me to retain
some modicum of sanity throughout this... *ahem* "process"). Now this is pure speculation on my part, and should be treated entirely as such, but its my belief that in light of the silicon and chip shortages, the limited supply of these early SKUs(most of the plain 3060s, the non HC 3090s, as well as
all the 3060ti's, 3070s, and 3080s - even in LHR form) and astronomical queue times for them is a result of stock being diverted to maintain contract fulfillment for things that were decided far in advance of the situation we now find ourselves in, leaving little to none left over for direct sale/queue fulfillment. My basis for this speculation is the comparatively rapid movement of the 3070ti and 3080ti queues compared to all prior cards. Knowing full well the situation at the time(being, what, 9 months into it at this point when those dropped?), I believe the decision was made to allocate
far fewer cards to contract fulfillment(by taking less contracts) in order to actually have cards left over for direct sale/queue/warranty replacement/step-up/etc. Its the only conclusion I can come up with for why the later SKUs are still moving, while the 'legacy' ones are stopped dead in their tracks.
For all those out there still waiting on a 3060 of either flavor, or a 3070/80/90, you might try getting in queue(even if its a bit late now) for the 3070/80 ti cards. Even being 3 months late to get in line, I
still imagine that you'll see fulfillment sooner than on those older SKUs, for the simple reason that the queues for the newer cards are
actually moving(data again based on enewt's community tracking project - as others have stated, I'm forced to agree that at least
some level of transparency from EVGA in this matter would have been/would be nice; it shouldn't be up to the community to take something like this upon themselves), whereas the ones for the older/'launch' cards(and their direct replacements, in the case of SKUs that received the LHR treatment) are very much
not. I believe that EVGA committed to contracts to supply X number of cards to Y number of companies, prior to everything going pear shaped regarding the supply chain, and is simply stuck honoring those agreements with little to no stock left over to satisfy end users who wish to purchase direct/queue. Again, just my $0.02, and
again, this is all speculation, and not meant to be taken as an attempt to throw shade at EVGA.
Now I'm just spitballing, and I'll admit that I'm not intimately familiar with the 2nd hand warranty policy(beyond knowing its a thing that exists), but what about adding a clause that invalidates the transferability for any card sold second hand in anything other than "used" condition(not "open box", or "new(other)", etc. but full on "used"), while requiring an invoice to back it up. I could imagine an action like that putting at least
some kind of dent in the ebay scalper market, as there really is a significant gap between the new and used price points when it comes to these things(I checked, even making sure to tick "sold listings only"). The transferable warranty is a pretty significant "value-add" for EVGA products vs their competitors, and effectively making scalpers choose between losing out on that and selling the cards as no warranty at all, or being forced to list them as "used" and lose out on 80% of their margin would make some of them reconsider(at least the more 'opportunistic' ones, IMHO).
Additionally, as an extension to the above(or possible alternative), you could start tracking the serial numbers of second hand sale registrations, and correlating those against known serials that have been sold via the queue. If the provided invoice/proof of sale lists the card as "new in box", and you successfully match the serial number back to the account to which it was originally sold, just permanently blacklist them. No more sales of any kind, all queues canceled, account closed, name, address, credit card number all blacklisted. Selling a used card is one thing, with plenty of reasons to justify it, from upgrades(not wanting to wait on stock for the step-up queue) to financial hardship, and beyond(I myself am considering selling my 3070 ti that I settled on - as it was all I could get to replace my ailing 980 ti which was on its way out the door - in order to help pay for the 3080 ti that I wanted(an OG 3080 was what I had
really wanted, if we want to get technical, but seeing as those are virtually unobtainium outside of the scalper market at the moment, it seems like the 3080 ti is going to be the way to go if I actually want to get my hands on a GPU, astronomical MSRP hike over the original model be damned). All that being said, selling a new in box card that you got off queue is an
entirely different matter, at least in my opinion, and is something that EVGA should be making a priority to shut down.
And yeah, I
do support the ability for people to purchase multiple GPUs should they have a legitimate need for it. The folks I see levying complaints about people getting cards before them(potentially
multiple cards), based on the queue times they have stated, are probably still holding out hope for the original launch card SKUs of a year ago(which as I mentioned previously,
aren't moving, and haven't been for 9 months now), as the 3070 and 80 ti's have barely been out for 3 months right now, so any queue time longer than that is undeniably for one of the older cards, which as we've observed, simply don't have supply(not just insufficient supply to meet demand, but just flat out
no supply, at least not any that's going to the queue). I saw that my queues for those older cards weren't going anywhere, and I got on the site at 6 am and attempted to bash my way into line for one of the new SKUs when they dropped; now I've got a 3070 ti to show for it. It may not have been the card I wanted, but at least it doesn't crash randomly when idle like my 980 ti did(purchased second hand, long since out of warranty). It just seems to me like an unwillingness to adapt to the situation on the part of these people, when its readily apparent that there just
isn't stock for those older models available to be distributed to the queue, and continuing to sit on your place in line and lament the lack of progress is clearly not a viable avenue for procuring yourself a GPU. Like I said before, get in queue for some of the newer stuff that's actually moving. When there's no supply, pulling other people out of line in order to push yourself further ahead isn't going to change the fact that
the line isn't moving, which is why I'm fundamentally opposed to it as an idea.
Will we see any of these changes get implemented? No, probably not, but hey at least I got this stuff off my chest... There's your rant for the day. (love to see some of those website issues I mentioned back on page 1 fixed too, BTW - especially the code oriented ones, which are probably the most grievous of the lot)